This is what happens, a voice in my head kept saying. This is what happens at One of Those Terrible Places. Hadn’t Gorsebrook sounded too good to be true from the start? Hadn’t that always been in my gut? But I denied my gut, didn’t I? Because the skilled and Machiavellian Marlene had told me exactly what I wanted to hear. That I could tuck my sister away somewhere, out of my keeping, and she would be perfectly happy and safe.

“You’re awful-izing,” said Jessica, who I’d called soon after getting off the phone with Marlene. “That’s my therapist’s word. You’re letting your imagination run away with you.”

“But maybe Marlene doesn’t actually know what she’s doing,” I babbled, continuing to awful-ize. “And all that . . . professionalism of hers, what if that’s her only skill? Putting on a reassuring face? Making people feel like she’s got a handle on things? But really it’s a facade and she’s barely keeping it together? I’ve known people like that. People who know how to say all the right things, and meanwhile, just beneath the surface, they’re completely inept.”

“But that’s a worst-case scenario,” said Jessica. “It’s more likely this is just a terrible oversight —”

“Losing a resident — that’s a worst-case scenario,” I said.

“Just wait and see,” said Jessica. “You weren’t going to move Kelli into Gorsebrook tomorrow.”

“Yeah, but I would’ve liked to have gotten her started in the day program. And — like, god . . .” Something occurred to me then that started my heart pounding again like when I’d imagined Kelli in the lost resident’s — Jeremy’s — place, alone on the sidewalks of downtown, pacing, hands over her ears, whispering frantically to herself (and what if a man came up to her then? A man who wanted something? Who didn’t understand, and got angry? Like the man who kicked and pounded Jessica’s car that day? Fuck this rude bitch!). “I’m just realizing,” I told Jessica — and I could hear my voice now had a yelping quality to it — “I’ve bet our future on this place! This whole upcoming move has been organized around Gorsebrook. I’ve been basing all our decisions on it. Where we’re going to live. The neighbourhoods where we’ve been looking at condos . . .”

“We’re looking downtown,” said Jessica. “It’s a good place to be, no matter what. Everything is close.”

“I can’t put my faith in these people,” I muttered. Now I was stuck on the memory of the man in the parking lot, screaming at my sister; imagining what would have happened if there were not a locked car door separating them. If something like that — worse than that — were to happen to Kelli again just because I’d let myself be lulled into the idea that she’d be fine under the care of strangers, I knew that I would literally not be able to live with myself.

“Karen,” said Jessica, “just wait and see.”